Compassion "In Truth and Action" How Sacred and Secular Places Serve Civic Purposes, and What Washington Should--And Should Not--Do to Help
By John J. Diiulio, Jr., speech prepared for delivery and release before the National Association of Evangelicals, Dallas, Texas, Wednesday, March 7, 2001.

Of course, Christian folks have special ways
of making a body feel welcome. For example, as I exited a
church following a speech, a little old lady stopped me. "I
saw you in Christianity Today," she said. "Did you like the
story?" I asked. "Oh," she replied, " I can't recall the
story so well, just that big picture of your face." Then,
with a knowing smile, she reached out, gave my hand a gentle squeeze,
and whispered, "You're not nearly so fat in person,
dear." Now that's vision touched by the Spirit.

Some four weeks ago, I was deeply honored to
accept President George W. Bush's offer to serve as Assistant to the
President and Director of the new White House Office of Faith-Based and
Community Initiatives.

Before then, I used to joke that, after 20
years at Harvard, Penn, and Princeton, I knew the true definition of an
Ivy League professor, namely, someone who can speak for 2 hours or 5
minutes on any subject without any essential change in content.

Now, however, I am learning the true
definition of a senior Washington official, namely, someone who can
speak for 2 hours or 5 minutes on any subject without saying ...
anything at all!

But, kidding aside, I am truly glad to be
here, for I have much to say, and I am going to say it plainly, and
with as much "truth" mediated by "grace" as I can muster.

President Bush has a huge heart for helping
the least, the last, and the lost of our society. He
recognizes a real need for faith-based and community
initiatives. As he recently stated:

Government
cannot be replaced by charities, but it can and should
welcome
them as partners. We must heed the growing consensus
across
America that successful government social programs work in
fruitful
partnership with community-serving and faith-based
organizations--whether
run by Methodists, Muslims, Mormons, or
good people
of no faith at all. President George W. Bush,
Rallying
the Armies of Compassion, Washington, D.C., January 30,
2001,
foreword.

We the People: Community Helpers and Healers

The consensus cited by the President runs wide
and deep. Americans of every socioeconomic status and
demographic description have faith in faith-based and community
approaches to solving social problems.

Solid survey data compiled over several
decades by George Gallup, Jr. and associates indicate that most
citizens (in 1995, 86 percent of blacks, 60 percent of whites) believe
religion can help "answer all or most of today's problems." George
Gallup, Jr., "Religion in America: Will the Vitality of Churches Be the
Surprise of the Next Century", Public Perspective (October-November
1995), p. 4. Also see Gallup and D. Michael Lindsay,
Surveying the Religious Landscape: Trends in U.S. Beliefs (Harrisburg,
PA: Morehouse Publishing, 1999).

The same week the President signed my office
into being, the Pew Charitable Trusts released a national poll showing
that most Americans believe "local churches, synagogues or mosques,"
together with "organizations such as the Salvation Army, Goodwill
Industries and Habitat for Humanity," are top problem-solving
organizations "in their communities." Ready, Willing, and Able-Citizens
Working for Change: A Survey for the Pew Partnership for Civic Change,
The Pew Charitable Trusts, One Commerce Square, Philadelphia, PA,
January 31, 2001, Tables 42 and 43. Also see Richard Morin,
"Nonprofit, Faith-Based Groups Near Top of Poll on Solving Social
Woes," The Washington Post, February 1, 2001.

We the People appreciate our community helpers
and healers, and so should our government.

Led by Sara E. Melendez, Independent Sector,
an umbrella organization representing nonprofits both religious and
secular, estimates that America is home to over 300,000
community-serving religious congregations, 4 out of 5 of which provide
services without regard to the religious identities--if any--of those
whom they serve. Independent Sector, 1200 Eighteenth Street,
NW Suite 200, Washington, D.C., 20036, or www.IndependentSector.org.

My research colleague Professor Ram A. Cnaan
has documented how congregations serve needy neighbors in America's
poorest urban communities. Pardonable Penn pride aside, while a dozen
or so decent studies have been published, and while their somewhat
disparate findings deserve notice, Professor Cnaan's remain the only
suitably scientific multi-city datasets on the subject. For a brief
overview, see Ram A. Cnaan and Gaynor I. Yancey, "Our Hidden Safety
Net," in E.J. Dionne and John J. Dilulio, Jr., eds., What's God Got to
Do with the American Experiment (Washington, D.C.: Brookings
Institution, 2000), chapter 21. Also see Ram A. Cnaan et
al., The Newer Deal: Social Work and Religion in Partnership (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1999), and Cnaan, Keeping Faith in the City:
How 401 Relig1ous Congregations Serve Their Neediest Neighbors, Center
for Research on Religion and Urban Civil Society, CRRUCS Report 2000-1,
University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, March 20, 2000.

For example, based on 3-hour site visits and
20-page questionnaires covering some 215 different social services
administered at 401 of Philadelphia's roughly 2,000 community-serving
congregations (on the way to a complete census of congregation
services), Professor Cnaan and his associates report that Cnaan,
Keeping Faith, ibid. - over 90 percent of urban
congregations provide social services, from preschools to prison
ministries, from food pantries to health clinics, from literacy
programs to day-care centers, and so much more;
- the replacement value of their services in
Philadelphia alone is a very conservatively estimated quarter-billion
dollars a year; - their primary beneficiaries
are poor neighborhood children and youth who are not members, and whose
families are not members, of the congregations that serve them;
urban community-serving congregations are
actually slightly more likely to partner with secular nonprofits than
they are to collaborate with each other; and
- almost none of the urban community-serving
ministries make entering their buildings, receiving their services, or
participating in their programs in any way contingent upon any
immediate or eventual profession of faith, or any performance of
religious rites or rituals, of any kind.

Likewise, try imagining America without the
secular non-profit organizations, large and small, that work with and
through community-based organizations to meet critical social and urban
needs. American Red Cross. America's
Promise. Best Friends. Big Brothers Big Sisters
of America. Boys & Girls Clubs of America.

Before you get out of the A's and B's, the
honor roll of secular community-serving nonprofits runs into the
hundreds if not the thousands, and the social good they do touches
literally millions.

Take just a single example, Big Brothers Big
Sisters of America. It's been around for nearly a hundred
years. By this summer, on any given day, some 200,000
children will have a caring, well-matched adult mentor in their lives
thanks to the Bigs. A systematic evaluation found that
putting a Big into a needy urban child's life cut that child's
probability of first-time illegal drug use in half, reduced violent
(hitting) behavior by about a third, improved school attendance, and
more. Joseph Tierney and Jean Baldwin Grossman, Making a Difference: An
Impact Study of Big Brothers Big Sisters (Philadelphia, PA:
Public/Private Ventures, 1995). Also see Cynthia L. Sipe,
Mentoring: A Synthesis of P/PV's Research, 1988-1995 (Philadelphia, PA:
Public/Private Ventures, 1996).

Both faith-based and secular community-serving
organizations rely greatly on volunteers, and, in both cases, those
volunteers are drawn largely from churches, synagogues, mosques, and
other religious institutions.

As Father Andrew Greely has noted, "frequency
of church attendance and membership in church organizations correlate
strongly with voluntary service. People who attend services
once a week or more are approximately twice as likely to volunteer as
those who attend rarely if ever." Even a third of persons who volunteer
for specifically secular activities also relate their service 'to the
influence of a relationship based in their religion." Andrew Greely,
"The Other Civic America: Religion and Social Capital," American
Prospect, May-June 1997, pp. 70, 72. Or, as Gallup has
observed, "churches and other religious bodies are the major supporters
of voluntary services for neighborhoods and
communities. Members of a church or synagogue'tend to be
much more involved in charitable activity, particularly through
organized groups." Gallup, "Religion in America," op. cit., p. 2.

Metaphorically speaking, community-serving
faith-based organizations are the army ants of civil society, daily
leveraging ten times their human and financial weight in social
good. Or, as I have elsewhere described them, they are the
paramedics of urban civil society, saving lives and restoring health,
answering emergencies with miracles.

But, as Professor Cnaan has noted, "no matter
how they exert themselves" --and, by implication, no matter how much,
or how strategically, we help them'they can improve or "complement,"
but not replace, "state services." To dramatize the point, just
consider that, even if all 353,000 religious congregations in America
doubled their annual budgets and devoted them entirely to the cause,
and even if, at the same time, the costs of government social welfare
programs were magically cut overnight by a fifth, the congregations
could barely cover a year's worth of Washington's spending on these
programs, and never even come close to covering total program costs.
Cnaan and Yancey, "Our Hidden," op. cit., p. 159. According
to Independent Sector data (see note 5 above), in 1996 the total
revenue for congregations was $81.2 billion. Following the
example given, double that to $162 billion. In 1995,
Washington expended $204 billion on Medicaid, Supplemental Security
Income, housing assistance, food and of religious nutrition, and other
aid to low-income citizens; see Gary Burtless et al., "The Future of
the Social Safety Net," in Robert D. Reischauer, ed., Setting Budget
Priorities (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1997), p. 79.
Cutting $204 billion by a fifth leaves $160 billion. And
remember: that's only the federal share of social welfare program
costs. For example, in 1995, on Medicaid alone, the states
spent nearly $70 billion; see John J. Dilulio, Jr. and Richard P.
Nathan, "Introduction," in Frank Thompson and John J. Dilulio,
Jr.,eds., Medicaid and Devolution: A View From the States (Washington,
D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1998), p. 4.

By the same token, even the oldest and
best-performing networks of secular nonprofit organizations, if they
are truly to help transform lives, resurrect blighted neighborhoods,
and achieve civic results at citywide or national scale, need
help. For example, as Big Brothers Big Sisters Board
Chairman, the Honorable former U.S. Senator Dan Coats, has noted, on
any given day America is home to as many as 15 million at-risk children
who could use a caring, well-matched mentor, including the hundreds of
thousands of low-income urban children who have one or both parents
incarcerated. Honorable Dan Coats, speaking at Greater Exodus Baptist
Church, Philadelphia, PA, September 15, 2000.

Compassionate
Conservatism For Church-State Separation

President George W. Bush has been absolutely
steadfast in articulating a caring, common sense vision of
compassionate conservatism.

The President's compassionate conservatism
enlists government effort but resists government growth.

His vision comprehends both the strengths and
the limits of faith-based and community initiatives. It
calls on the rest of us to help those who help the "least of these" by
giving them more of our own time and more of our own money.

Compassionate conservatism warmly welcomes
godly people back into the public square while respecting and
upholding, without fail, our wise, benevolent constitutional traditions
governing church, state, and civic pluralism. It fosters
model public/private partnerships so that community-based
organizations, religious and non-religious, can work together and
across racial, denominational, urban/ suburban, and other divides to
achieve civic results.

And it challenges Washington to work overtime
and in a bipartisan fashion to ensure that the social programs
taxpayers fund, and the networks of nonprofit organizations that help
to administer those programs, are performance-managed,
performance-measured, and open to competition from qualified
community-serving organizations, large or small, young or old, sacred
or secular.

Absolutely steadfast.

In his July 22, 1999 speech in Indianapolis,
"The Duty of Hope," then-Governor George W. Bush rejected the
"destructive" idea that "if government would only get out of the way,
all our problems would be solved." We should, he argued,
look "first to faith-based organizations, charities, and community
groups that have shown their ability to save and change
lives." "There are," however, "some things government should
be doing--like Medicaid for poor children." The challenges
faced by community groups "are often greater than their
resources." Rather than asking them to "make bricks without
straw," Washington must rally support--"both public and private?"--to the
"local armies of compassion" that are so often "outflanked" and
"outgunned."

Compare then-Governor Bush's early words to
the relevant passages (and numbers) in now-President Bush's first
budget blueprint. A Blueprint for New Beginnings: A Responsible Budget
for America's Priorities (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing
Office, 2001), pp. 55-57, Table S-5. This President keeps
his promises. This Chief Executive won't rest until he
translates his compassionate vision into concrete policy and effective
action.

Likewise, from "The Duty of Hope" speech to
the present, President Bush has been steadfast in stating that
faith-based and community initiatives will be promoted,
but in ways that honor the First Amendment. Here's a
representative sample of his statements on the subject over the last
four weeks:

Government cannot be replaced by charities or
volunteers. And government should
not fund religious activities. (Speech to Congress,
February 28, 2001)

I strongly respect the separation of church
and state--I am a secular official.
(Press
Conference, February 23, 2001)

Our plan will not favor religious institutions
over non-religious institutions. As President
I'm interested in what's constitutional, and I'm interested in
what works.
(Remarks
at National Prayer Breakfast, February 1,
2001)

Government, of course, cannot fund, and will
not fund, religious activities.
(Remarks at Fishing School, January 30, 2001)

(W)e will not fund a church or a synagogue or
a mosque or any religion, but instead, will be
funding programs that affect people in a positive way.
(Press Conference, January 29, 2001)

We will not fund the religious activities of
any group, but when people of faith provide
social services, we will not discriminate against them.
(Remarks in Announcement of Office, January 29, 2001)

The paramount goal is compassionate results,
and private and charitable groups,
including
religious ones, should have the fullest opportunity
permitted by law to compete on a level playing
field, so long as they
achieve valid public
purposes--The delivery of social services must be
results-oriented and should value the bedrock
principles of pluralism,
nondiscrimination,
evenhandedness, and neutrality.
(Executive
Order Establishing Office, January 29, 2001)

The President has asked former Indianapolis
Mayor Stephen Goldsmith to assume a post at the Corporation for
National Service, advise him, and assist my office. The
Mayor and I have consistently echoed and amplified the President's
constitutionally correct and socially sound stance on church-state
separation. For example, Mayor Goldsmith at a White House
Press Briefing, January 30, 2001: "Secondly, consistent with what you
heard before, and consistent with the views of all of us, that
government should not fund religion, period--So no money for
religion." Yours, writing in The Wall Street Journal,
February 14, 2001: "First, nobody has suggested that--government should
fund programs that make religious profession a condition of receiving
services. To put it bluntly, government is not going to
'fund religion.' "

Why an
Office Of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives?

So, let me just say it again: Washington's not
funding religion or sectarian worship. What we are doing--or,
dare I say, what we're fixin' to do--is three interrelated things.

First, we aim to boost charitable giving, both
human and financial. The first financial boosts are in the President's
budget plan, which, among other relevant provisions, would permit 80
million non-itemizers -- 70 percent of all taxpayers -- to deduct
charitable contributions. The human boosts are embodied in
the President's use of the bully pulpit in valuing volunteers, and in
Mayor Goldsmith's hopes for retooling AmeriCorps in ways that put
college-educated, public-spirited young adults at the disposal of the
small faith-based and community organizations that need them.
(AmeriCorps already has people in urban community-serving ministries
and such, but we aim to refine and enlarge their participation on
behalf of needy children, youth, and families.)

Second, we are authorized to form centers and
conduct program audits in five Cabinet Agencies--Justice, Labor,
Education, Health and Human Services, and Housing and Urban
Development.

This is easily the most crucial, but least
well-understood, part of our mission. It's about paving the
path to civic results through greater government solicitude for
faith-based and community organizations. It's the real civic
rationale for Charitable Choice. So, please permit me to
explain it a bit. For overviews, see Donald F. Kettl, Government By
Proxy: (Mis)Managing Federal Programs (Washington, D.C.: Congressional
Quarterly Press, 1988) and Sharing Power: Public Governance and Private
Markets (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution,
1993). Also see John J. Dilulio, Jr. et al., Improving
Government Performance: An Owner's Manual (Washington, D.C.: Brookings
Institution, 1993), and James Q. Wilson and John J. Dilulio, Jr.,
American Government, Eighth Edition (Houghton Mifflin Company, 2001),
chapter 13.

In sum, since the end of World War II,
virtually every domestic policy program that Washington has funded in
whole or in part has been administered not by federal civil servants
alone (there are about 2 million of those today, roughly the same
number as in 1960), but by federal workers in conjunction with state
and local government employees, for-profit firms, and non-profit
organizations. There are, for example, six people who work
indirectly for Washington for every one federal bureaucrat who
administers social programs.

Certain nonprofit organizations, both
religious and secular, have long been funded in whole or in part
through this federal "government-by-proxy" system. Some, no
doubt, deserve their privileged positions because they have produced
measurable civic results. Others, however, are in
because...they're in.

Despite a far-reaching 1993 federal law (the
first ever of its kind) requiring federal agencies to do
performance-managed, performance-measured grant-making, you can still
count on your fingers and toes the number of government-by-proxy
programs that have really put nonprofit providers to the test.

Let's suppose you knew for a fact that, in a
given city administrative territory or unit, a quarter of all, say,
housing rehabilitation work got done each year by community-based
organizations, religious and secular (or religious and secular working
in tandem). Suppose, too, that you noticed that barely a
penny of every federal dollar for housing rehabilitation programs
reached those very community-based organizations, while 99 cents went
to other government-by-proxy providers, either for-profit or
non-profit. What might you conclude?

Well, some fraction of the funding disparity
might well be due to such innocent variables as size (other things
equal, larger organizations get funded at higher rates than smaller
ones) or capacity (other things equal, organizations with a proven
performance record get funded while up-start organizations go
begging).

But what if, in the administrative territory
or unit at hand, even large, volunteer-based organizations that have
rehabbed hundreds of houses for next to nothing have never been in the
federal funding loop.

What if, as well, the area, despite decades of
government-by-proxy program funding, still has a fifth of its housing
abandoned or dilapidated, while nearby homeless shelters are bursting
at the seams.

And, finally, what if some of the
community-based organizations, either individually or together, had
applied for government program support but were summarily rebuffed by
federal, state, or local bureaucrats on this, that, or the other
procedural or regulatory grounds.

Now, repeat this thought experiment with
respect to almost any federally-funded domestic government-by-proxy
program you fancy--after-school literacy programs funded decade-in,
decade-out in neighborhoods where the fraction of children reading at
or above grade-level is lower today than it was when the programs
began; work-based welfare reform programs that boast ever more "job
training hours" but get few clients into paying full-time jobs; crime
prevention programs founded to serve juvenile offenders on community
probation but more skilled at hiring adult "youth advocates" to
communicate about the ostensible root causes of crime; you name it.

If many nonprofits in the government-by-proxy
network have never had any meaningful performance evaluation; if their
claims of greater "capacity" are mainly proxies for their bigger
staffs; and if their public poses as people who are "up close and
personal" in the lives of the citizens whom they serve are belied by
the fact that they have more personnel in the suites than on the
streets, then, purely in the interest of helping those in need while
generating a better return on the public's investment in social
programs, why shouldn't the leaders of qualified community and
faith-based organizations--local groups that really have been doing this
work for years and really do "put their hips where their lips" are in
serving the poor--be able, if they so choose, to seek partial government
funding on the same basis as any other non-governmental providers of
social services?

What's Charitable Choice For?

They should!

That is why the President, a government
reformer who demands business-like results, has explicitly directed my
office to help level the federal funding playing field to "encourage
and support the work of charities and faith-based and community
groups," including small ones "that offer help and love one person at a
time":

These groups are working in every neighborhood
in America, to fight homelessness and
addiction and domestic violence, to provide a hot
meal or a mentor or a safe haven for our
children. Government should welcome
these groups to apply for funds, not discriminate against them
.
(Speech
to Congress, February 28, 2001)

That is also precisely what "Charitable
Choice" is all about. It's what, together with related
performance-based reforms, is needed not only to better serve the poor
and revitalize needy neighborhoods now, but also to help usher in what
Michael Joyce of the Bradley Foundation has aptly termed a new,
no-nonsense, post-Great Society "science of public administration."

What, exactly, is Charitable Choice, how does
it "welcome" faith-based organizations to the federal
government-by-proxy fold, and what, if any, real "church-state" or
other problems does it pose?

There is enormous confusion on this score, so
enormous that I sometimes think, given the obvious intelligence of the
persons sowing the confusion, it must be purposeful (bad for
truth-telling, but good for direct mail scare-tactic fund-raising?).

My office will soon be distributing detailed
information on Charitable Choice, suitable for frontline Samaritans,
average citizens, and agitated lawyers. But, for now, let me
just highlight some of the main points.

In brief, President Clinton signed
Charitable Choice into law on August 22, 1996. It thus has
been on the books for almost five years now. It was a largely
bipartisan and by-consensus provision of the otherwise uproariously
contentious debate over the 1996 federal welfare law (the Personal
Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996).
Essentially, it covered Temporary Assistance to Needy Families and
welfare-to-work funding. Another Charitable Choice provision
passed in 1998 (part of the Community Services Block Grant), and yet
another, reaching some faith-based drug treatment programs, passed
twice last year. Five years ago, Charitable Choice was little-noticed
but landmark. Today, it's much-noticed and still landmark,
but mainstream.

Under Charitable Choice, community-serving
organizations, both religious and secular, can seek federal support on
the same basis as any other non-governmental providers (for-profit or
not-for-profit) of those services. Sacred places that serve
civic purposes can seek federal (or federal-state) funding without
having to divest themselves of their religious iconography or symbols.

They can, if you will, remain "Saint Vincent
DePauls," and not be forced as a condition of receiving penny one of
public funding to become "Mr. Vincent DePauls."

They can hum hymns even while they rehab
houses and hammer nails.

They can say "God bless you" even when nobody
in the health clinic has sneezed.

Why, they can even permit nuns in habits to
rub shoulders with AmeriCorps volunteers in an after-school program
operating out of an inner-city church basement.

As Professor Stephen Monsma has documented,
for decades the sacred and secular have mixed in the administration of
hundreds of taxpayer-supported programs. Stephen Monsma, When Sacred
and Secular Mix: Religious Nonprofits and Public Money (Lanham, MD:
Rowan and Littlefield, 1996), pp. 37-41. By some estimates,
for example, a third or more of all day-care utilized in low-income
urban neighborhoods with high concentrations of welfare-to-work
recipients is provided by faith-based organizations.

Religious participation in day-care funding is
specifically authorized by a 1990 federal law. However, as
Professor Monsma shows, all too many other laws and regulations do not
clearly authorize such involvement. Charitable Choice gives
community-serving religious nonprofits and government officials
specific guidelines that legitimate and guide the participation of
faith-based organizations in federal funding programs.

To wit, faith-based providers that receive
penny one of public money cannot'that's not--discriminate against
beneficiaries on the basis of race, color, gender, age, national
origin, disability, or religion.

Regarding religion, Charitable Choice
reinforces federal anti-discrimination laws by explicitly prohibiting
participating faith-based organizations from denying service to people
"on the basis of religion, a religious belief, or refusal to actively
participate in a religious practice."

Moreover, government must provide
beneficiaries with religious objections to receiving services from a
faith-based organization with an equivalent secular
alternative. This means that accessing the alternatives must
not place an undue burden on the beneficiary (no ridiculously long
drives or such).

And if, as per the statutes, government fails
to ensure ample and equivalent secular alternatives, if its actions
have the effect of "diminishing the religious freedom of beneficiaries
of assistance," then beneficiaries may enforce their rights against the
government in a private cause of action for injunctive relief.

Also, federal law has long required an
independent CPA audit of any group, religious or secular, that receives
more than $300,000 a year in government funds. Charitable
Choice flatly prohibits federal funds from being used "for sectarian
worship, instruction, or proselytization." In the case of
faith-based groups, Charitable Choice favors segregated accounts -- so
do I -- and limits any audits to the walled-off government funds used
for public purposes.

Huge leaks? Some critics of
Charitable Choice assert that, even where religious organizations form
501(c)(3) entities, there is no effective way to segregate fiscal
accounts. Money, they remind us, is fungible, and tax
dollars will leak between Bible studies and soup kitchens.

Well, money is fungible--in the entire
government-by-proxy network.

Anyone who has ever actually worked in or
studied secular nonprofits that get government grants (universities,
ahem, come to mind) knows that funds sometimes "leak" between
projects. But government has okay ways to detect and
minimize that leakage, and there is absolutely nothing about
community-based organizations, religious or secular, that places them
beyond the reach of personnel, procurement, and other relevant
protocols.

For starters, what the Constitution requires
of government is equal treatment, neither favoring nor disfavoring
groups because they are religious. Again, the federal
government will not distribute funds on a religious
basis. Funds must go to non-governmental providers,
religious or secular, that meet all relevant anti-discrimination laws,
procurement procedures, and performance protocols.

Second, before Charitable Choice, any
organization that could fill out grant application forms and afford the
postage could apply for federal support. Some religious or
quasi-religious groups that many citizens find offensive did so, and
some got contracts for particular services.

Before Charitable Choice.

With and since Charitable Choice, the law
still applies. But, if anything, by making it easier for
qualified community-based organizations, religious or secular, to
become part Washington's government-by-proxy networks, a
duly-implemented Charitable Choice will increase competition, raise
performance standards, and thereby make it less likely than before that
groups more interested in advocacy (whatever they're advocating) than
in service will merit grants.

Third, let's remember that there are at
present many federally-funded secular nonprofits that represent
ideological-political (as opposed to theological-religious) worldviews
offensive to many Americans. In some cases, their approach
to service delivery is rather plainly anchored more in
ideological-political preferences than it is in any empirical evidence
about what works, or any independent evaluations of their program
efficacy.

Still, the Constitution gives taxpayers no
right to insist that government decisions, including procurement
decisions, will not offend their moral judgments. Evenhanded
performance standards, not illegal, a priori procurement black lists,
have been, and continue to be, government's best constitutional method
for keeping horrible louts, religious or secular, on the outs.

Hiring Loopholes? Under Section
702, Title VII, of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, religious
organizations are permitted to discriminate in employment decisions on
the basis of religion.

Charitable Choice preserves this 37-year-old
right of religious organizations to take religion into account in their
employment decisions. Even so, faith-based organizations that receive
penny one of public funds may not discriminate in hiring, firing, or
promotion decisions based on race, color, national origin, gender, age,
and disability. And, as I have already noted, regardless of
race, color, national origin, gender, age, disability, and religion,
faith-based organizations that receive any taxpayer support must serve
all beneficiaries and may not require them to participate in any
religious components of the program.

Still, "Title VII," as the issue is now often
short-handed, is perhaps the single most contentious aspect of
Charitable Choice. It was not so hotly-debated an issue in
the 1995-96 debates over Charitable Choice, but because critics'
church-state objections had no traction, it is hotly debated now, and
it does raise legitimate concerns on all sides.

Should receiving penny one of public money
require religious organizations to hire people who are not
co-religionists, and who may even be actively opposed to their beliefs,
benevolent traditions, and service goals?

And, practically speaking, to what extent do
the urban community-serving ministries'the faith-based organizations
that are most likely to seek public grants to offset the costs of their
social service delivery programs--presently discriminate in hiring on
religious grounds?

As Professor Jeffrey Rosen pointed out in a
recent essay, "without the ability to discriminate on the basis of
religion in hiring and firing staff, religious organizations lose the
right to define their organizational mission enjoyed by secular
organizations that receive public funds...Planned Parenthood may refuse
to hire those who don't share its views about abortion; equal treatment
requires that churches, mosques, and synagogues have the same right to
discriminate...The Supreme Court accepted this reasoning in 1988, when it
upheld religious nonprofits" exemption from the federal law prohibiting
religious discrimination. And by extending this exemption to
religious groups that receive government funds, the charitable-choice
law is careful to insist that these groups can discriminate in the
hiring of staff but not in the treatment of beneficiaries." Jeffrey
Rosen, "Religious Rights," The New Republic, February 26, 2001, p. 16.

I concur and so does my friend Senator Joseph
Lieberman. Critics who contend that Title VII furnishes
religious organizations with a special "hiring loophole" are simply
wrong, unless by "hiring loophole" they mean "equal
treatment." Rhetorically and polemically, it may be
effective to assert that the exemption amounts to "legalized
discrimination" of the "No Catholics or Jews Need Apply"
variety. But honestly and intelligently, the exemption
amounts to no such thing, not anymore than Catholics who believe and
follow the Church's official teachings on social issues "need not
apply" to many secular nonprofits presently funded, in whole or in
part, through Washington's government-by-proxy system. To
accept ideological reasons for employment discrimination as legitimate
while rejecting theological ones out of hand is to arbitrarily,
unfairly, and--or so I believe the courts will find--unconstitutionally
relegate the civil rights of religious people in the public square to a
limbo of lesser moral, intellectual, and civic significance.

Besides, all government-funded nonprofit
organizations, religious or secular, ought to be judged according to
whether they follow all relevant laws and achieve measurable, positive
civic results. For example, there are today literally
hundreds of federal "children, youth, and family" programs that fund
nonprofits that are ostensibly receiving public support because they
get results. But do they, and, if not, why not?

According to the noted Brookings Institution
scholar Isabel V. Sawhill, the best available studies indicate that
the path to strengthening families and improving the life prospects of
needy children and youth can best be paved by programs that encourage
marriage, discourage divorce, encourage responsible parenting, and
discourage teen pregnancies. Isabel V. Sawhill, "Families At Risk," in
Henry J. Aaron and Robert D. Reischauer, eds., Setting National
Priorities: The 2000 Election and Beyond (Washington, D.C.: Brookings
Institution, 2000), chapter 4. Tax-supported secular
nonprofits promote "sex education" and hire like-minded
people. No strongly pro-life or pro-abstinence persons,
religious or not, "need apply," but that is their
right. But, after a generation-plus of funding, are their
civic results so great as to overwhelm any concern about their hiring
practices or allay any doubts about the empirical (as opposed to
ideological) character of their "intervention" expertise? Or
are they so plainly in line with mass public preferences that only
people with extreme ideological or religious views would question their
work? Hardly:

Efforts to reduce teen pregnancy have
traditionally centered on sex education...The
few careful evaluations find a mixed record of
effectiveness...Although most people believe that contraceptives should
remain available to teenagers, polls report
that more than 90 percent of the public
believes that abstinence is the right standard for
school-age youth...The greater availability of
contraception and abortion during the past
twenty-five years did not prevent an increase
in teen pregnancies and births, especially those out of wedlock.
Ibid., pp. 124-125.

In a recent edition of The Public Interest,
Dr. Sawhill called for involving faith-based organizations more fully
in the delivery of tax-supported children, youth, and family
programs. Her position is purely public-spirited and
pragmatic. As I mentioned earlier, a Pew-commissioned poll
found that most Americans view local religious congregations among the
nation's top local problem-solving organizations.

What I did not mention, however, is that, in
the same poll, the public ranked the federal government 14th (next to
dead last) on that same list of community problem-solving
organizations.

Maybe, just maybe, if the federal government
pursued what works in its government-by-proxy efforts; maybe if the
nonprofit organizations it enlisted to administer its services, whether
secular or religious, both followed the laws and got real results; then
perhaps we could improve government performance, increase public trust
in government, and demonstrably and cost-effectively enhance the life
prospects of needy persons whose lives are touched by what Washington
funds.

Furthermore, the "Title VII" controversy is so
heated because critics assume that the extent to which
community-serving ministries engage in religion-grounded employment
discrimination is so vast. Especially in urban America, that
is not a safe assumption.

For starters, remember, we're talking mainly
about volunteer organizations. "Employment," save for the
minister himself or the assistant pastor or two, is often a moot
issue.

Next, while no reliable data are yet
available, my last six years studying the ways and means of urban
community-serving ministries all across the country tell me that theirs
is typically an all-hands-on-deck world in which people of all
faiths--and of no faith--are "employed" (volunteer or get hired) so long
as they will enter the prisons, change the bed pans, counsel the
probated juvenile, tutor the inner-city child, and so on.

Take one of my own office's Associate
Directors, Reverend Mark Scott. Reverend Scott is a former Air Force
Captain, an engineer, and a library scientist. For the last
decade-plus, he also was one of a dozen or so Pentecostal
African-American ministers in Boston who worked closely with police,
probation officers, and other government authorities to drive down
youth crime, launch literacy programs, get ex-prisoners reconnected to
their families and into decent jobs, and more.

The success of Reverend Scott's ministry has
been heralded far and wide, including in the national
press. What has not been so widely reported, however, are
three things. First, the single most celebrated youth
outreach worker in Boston is Tenny Gross, an Israeli-born secular Jew
who has worked shoulder-to-shoulder with Reverend Scott and the Church
of God in Christ ministers to save the city's at-risk youth.

Second, the ministry has received enormous
help and worked in close collaboration with both the Catholic Church
and local Jewish organizations and leaders.

Third, the ministry, with only a dozen or so
core workers (most wholly unpaid), has several 501(c)(3) entities,
which Reverend Scott and his colleagues sought, not because they
absolutely had to by law, and certainly not because they enjoyed the
lawyers' fees and the paperwork, but because they have their own good
practical/administrative and theological/religious reasons for
segregating program activities and accounts.

The plural of anecdote is not data, but I am
almost certain that Reverend Scott's example is far closer to the norm,
at least among urban community-serving ministries that provide
preschool-to-prison social services, than what I, responding to a
series of "Title VII" questions raised during the course of a 3-hour
meeting with the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, and in a
not-to-be-misunderstood locution, termed solely "bible-thumping"
programs that provide no or merely incidental social services. Thomas
B. Edsall, "Jewish Leaders Criticize 'Faith-Based' Initiative," The
Washington Post, February 27, 2001.

Finally, among other "areas of
agreement concerning government funding of religious organizations to
provide social services," the American Jewish Committee's In Good Faith
document correctly advises:

The Supreme Court has not addressed whether a
religious organization retains the liberty to
make employment decisions on the basis of religion in the case of
employees who work in programs or activities
funded (in whole or in part) by, or paid with,
government money...(W)e agree that religious organizations retain
their ability to use religious criteria in
employment for those positions in
nongovernmental programs that are wholly privately funded, regardless
of whether other programs or activities of the
organization receive government funds. In Good
Faith: A Dialogue on Government Funding of
Faith-Based Organizations, Philadelphia, PA, Temple University,
Feinstein Center for American Jewish History,
February 2001, p. 9.

That's right, and important. We
will defend the right of religious organizations to hire staff who the
organization's shares core beliefs and tenets. When and if
the Court does rule, we will naturally follow its decision and
reasoning both in letter and in spirit. Even were it to be
held that a church-based program which receives public funds thereby
loses its Title VII exemption, it would not follow that the parent
church itself would, in all "non-governmental programs that are wholly
privately funded," would, too. And neither, of course,
would the long-standing tax-exempt status of religious organizations be
affected.

Hijacked Faith? Some
religious leaders, especially from within conservative evangelical
Christian communities of faith, have worried out loud that religious
bodies that receive government support will, over time, become
dependent on Caesar's coin. In turn, they fear, the
government/religious partnerships will enervate the spiritual
identities and characters of the participating churches and stifle
their prophetic voices. Even if strictly limited to public
support for specific social service delivery programs, they fear, the
resulting secularizing influences put the churches on a super-slippery
slope to losing the "faith" in "faith-based." And, despite
how it protects participating religious organizations from having to
divest themselves of their religious symbols and such, Charitable
Choice, they correctly note, does require them to meet all relevant
federal anti-discrimination and other laws, to ensure that program
funds are not spent for religious worship, and so on.

Such concerns are entirely understandable,
and, for many congregation leaders and faith communities, ought to be
controlling. Charitable Choice ought to be open to all
qualified community-serving groups, but not all groups ought to
participate. Faith leaders, organizations, and communities
that perceive the slope as secularizing and slippery ought simply to
opt out.

But, in all fairness, let's remember that
America's faith communities are as diverse in their traditions of
public/private partnerships as they are in their theological
understandings.

In particular, compared to predominantly
ex-urban white evangelical churches, urban African-American and Latino
faith communities have benevolent traditions and histories that make
them generally more dedicated to community-serving missions, and
generally more confident about engaging public and secular partners in
achieving those missions without enervating their spiritual identities
or religious characters. There are, to be sure, many urban
clergy who want nothing whatsoever to do with government as
well. But the "hijacked faith" fears expressed by some are
less pointed and less prevalent in metropolitan America. As
Professor Cnaan learned, when Charitable Choice is explained to them,
large fractions of urban community-serving ministers say "amen." Cnaan,
Keeping Faith, op. cit.

To cite a few hometown examples, if a Reverend
W. Wilson Goode or a Reverend Luis Cortez want to seek public support
for their services and programs on the same basis as any other
non-governmental providers of those services; if their faith motivates
them to be ready, willing, and joyously able to participate in
public/private and religious/ secular partnerships that achieve civic
results; then why should the fears or reluctance of other religious
leaders debar or deter them from acting in accordance with their own
best theological understandings and social commitments?

They most definitely should not.

With all due respect, and in all good
fellowship, predominantly white, ex-urban evangelical and national
para-church leaders, should be careful not to presume to speak for any
persons other than themselves and their own churches.

As I need not tell this audience, and as I was
quite explicit in telling Christianity Today, Tim Safford, "The
Criminologist Who Discovered Churches," Christianity Today, July 14,
1999. there are some old wounds within the churches that have yet to
heal, wounds that require greater efforts at racial reconciliation and
would benefit from less talk and more wholehearted "truth and action,"
as in 1 John 3:17 (NRSV):

Little children, let us love, not in word or
speech, but in truth and action.

In all truth and grace, and speaking now only
for myself and as a fellow Christian, I would call upon the National
Association of Evangelicals to (as we say on the inner-city streets)
get real--and get affiliated church leaders and their congregations to
get real-- about helping the poor, the sick, the imprisoned, and others
among "the least of these."

We all have to have ears to hear and a heart
to listen--and act. It's fine to fret about "hijacked faith,"
but to many brothers and sisters who are desperately ministering to the
needs of those who the rest of us in this prosperous society have left
behind, such frets would persuade more and rankle less if they were
backed by real human and financial help.

It's fine to speak as if with a universally
representative religious voice, but what gets spoken from afar gets
duly discounted when it reaches the neighborhood "Josephs"--and
"Josephines"--who have so little of anybody's resources, including the
church's--let me say that again in case you missed it: including the
church's--but do so much of the church's actual, on-the-ground,
Christ-like service to those in dire need.

America needs Charitable
Choice. Government needs better networks of social service
providers, religious and secular. Faith-based and community
initiatives must be promoted in the interests of improving government
performance and enhancing public trust. Community helpers
and healers need and deserve our individual and collective help.

But they would need it less, much less, if the
church behaved like the church, unified from city to suburb, working
across racial and denominational divides, on behalf of broken lives and
breadless families. 1 John 3:18 asks:

How does God's love abide in anyone who has
the world's goods and sees a brother or sister
in need and yet refuses help?

Some say Charitable Choice places churches in
"competition" with each other for public funds. Apart from
the fact that nobody is placing anybody in public competition for
anything, what about the fact that the private competition for
funds--including the literally hundreds of millions of dollars raised
and spent each year by national para-church organizations'seems hardly
to reach, and only weakly and episodically to benefit, the
community-serving urban churches that witness "truth and action" to the
poor every blessed day?

"Hijacked faith" can take many
forms, few more harmful than the self-hijack that honors the poor in
"word or speech" alone, if that.

There are also many slippery slopes in a faith
life, like the one-way slopes to the suburbs and away from
out-of-sight, out-of-mind human suffering and unmet social needs.

In Philadelphia, Reverend Herbert Hoover Lusk,
III has mobilized inner-city ministries and worked with predominantly
white churches in the city's suburbs and outer-rim regions on a wide
range of community-serving projects, from welfare-to-work projects to
mentoring prisoners' children, and more. You may remember
Reverend Lusk as the minister featured on the opening night of the
Republican National Convention in Philadelphia.

It can be done. It should be
done. But, whatever government does, it won't be done unless
more evangelical Christians and organizations like the NAE get real--and
get it done in "truth and action," all in His name. That
would be a very charitable choice indeed.

Finally, the concern that nonprofit
organizations can grow overly dependent on government funds must be
taken seriously, but no more seriously with respect to religious than
secular ones.

For example, political scientists Stephen
Rathgeb Smith and Michael Lipsky studied 13 nonprofits located in New
England, most of them founded before 1850, and most of them secular.
Stephen Rathgeb Smith and Michael Liupsky, Nonprofits For Hire: The
Welfare State in the Age of Contracting (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1993). In 1960, only two of them received
penny one of government support. By 1970, two received most
of their funding from government. By 1980, ten were
receiving a majority of their budgets from government.

The post-1960 phenomenon of "nonprofits for
hire," as Smith and Lipsky term it, has also dramatically increased the
government fraction of all funding received by any number of Catholic
and Jewish social service organizations. Many believe that
the government funding, either alone or in concert with other factors
and trends, has had a profoundly secularizing effect on these
organizations.

While there are no well-researched rules for
avoiding that fate, it seems rather clear that once any organization,
religious or secular, receives more than a quarter to half of its
funding from any single source, it risks its independence and ability
to remain faithful to core values and original
missions. Among other reasons, and as I will explain
momentarily, that is why performance-based contracting should be
short-term, and why, with respect to the so-called Compassion Capital
Fund proposed by President Bush, the federal contribution would
constitute not more than a quarter in the dollar of any model
public/private community-serving program, religious or secular.

Bogus alternatives? As I have
already discussed, Charitable Choice requires that government provide
beneficiaries with an equivalent secular alternative. Still,
some worry that, even with the best intentions and strongest
administrative hands, the government won't be able to honor this
guarantee.

Ensuring an alternative in rural areas might
be quite a challenge. So far, though, as a study last year
by Amy Sherman shows, officials are doing just fine. In the
nine states she investigated, there were only two instances when a
person needing help requested a secular alternative to the faith-based
provider, and officials immediately provided that alternative. Amy
Sherman, The Growing Impact of Charitable Choice: A
Catalogue of New Collaborations Between Government and Faith-Based
Organizations in Nine States (Washington, D.C.: Center for
Public Justice, March 2000). Since officials in the past
typically contracted mainly with secular programs, Charitable Choice
will most likely just add to the options available in rural and urban
areas, rather than diminishing them. In any case, Charitable
choice requires government officials to find a way to provide that
secular alternative. We will hold to that requirement.

Bloated agencies? I have heard
reports and read magazine articles asserting that my office would have
over 100 employees (mostly new hires) and necessitate an explosion in
state and local government employment to monitor and manage the scores
of billions of dollars that we (according to one quoted source) will
have coursing through the Department of Education alone.

Huh?

The office opened on February 20,
2001. The core office staff, myself included, will be 7 to
10 people including support staff. The five cabinet centers
won't be official/operational till 45 days following the signing of the
relevant Executive Order. The five cabinet centers will have
a total of not more than 40 workers, many of them assigned career
public servants, not new hires. The five audits, as per the
relevant Executive Order will recommend changes in regulations that
discriminate against qualified community-based providers, both
religious and secular. These recommendations could be
accepted or rejected and, if accepted, could in due course result in
government-by-proxy grant-making changes that affect billions of
dollars. (We sure hope so!)

The White House Office will not be disbursing
grants itself, but rather ensuring that federal programs are as
accessible, open and hospitable to faith-based groups as
possible. Indeed, if past experience with performance-based
initiatives holds, our office will, if anything, reduce the
administrative personnel needs up and down the government-by-proxy
chain. After all, while tracking process protocols is a
labor-intensive business, tracking performance protocols is
considerably less so--and considerably more productive of cost-effective
civic results to boot.

Beltway business-as-usual? Some
have asserted or insinuated that, because Charitable Choice passed
repeatedly, and despite the problems that we ourselves have identified
with its implementation to date (for example, only one church in all of
Philadelphia has yet to receive support for social service delivery
under the terms of the 1996 provision), our "real endgame" is simply to
ram another set of charitable choice laws through Congress, claim
political credit, pacify interested constituencies, and, win or lose,
be able to say we made good (or tried to make good, but...) on relevant
campaign promises.

Anyone who thinks that doesn't get just how
close to the President's heart faith-based and community initiatives
are. That's why we're taking a deliberative approach, and
focusing first on conducting our audits, studying competing ideas,
weighing competing perspectives, and looking forward to forging model
public/private partnerships. That's why we're following our
principles, correcting misconceptions, and reaching out widely.

My good friend Joe Klein, the New Yorker
political columnist, likes to quip that cynicism is what passes for
profundity among the mediocre. Washington business-as-usual feeds
cynicism, but there's nothing cynical about what we're hoping to
achieve or how we're hoping to achieve it.

Maybe those who cynically insist otherwise
missed U.S. Senator, and former Democratic candidate for Vice
President, Joe Lieberman by the President's side on January 30, 2001
when, together, they visited The Fishing School, a small
community-serving ministry in one of the poorest neighborhoods of
Washington, D.C. Also see Senator Lieberman's excellent remarks on
faith-based and community initiatives, as delivered at the National
Press Club, Washingtron, D.C., March 1, 2001, as part of the Pew Forum
on Religion and Public Life.

Maybe they weren't watching the President's
first address to Congress when he praised Philadelphia's Mayor John
Street, a Democrat who helped deliver an over 300,000-vote margin in my
city to Vice President Gore.

Or maybe they think that all that's just
symbolic politics or such.

Compassion Capital: Seeding
Citywide Public/Private Programs

Truly, it's not. In addition to
increasing charitable giving, human and financial, and beyond leveling
the federal funding playing field and improving government-by-proxy
programs through performance-based grant-making and Charitable Choice,
our third goal is to seed or expand selected model public/private
programs that involve community-based organizations in meeting civic
needs.

Official Washington must look for such models
beyond the beltway. It must look to mayors and local leaders
like Philly's Mayor Street, who beat the President to the punch by
establishing his own Office of Faith-Based and Voluntary Action in City
Hall last year. This past New Year's Day, Mayor Street,
joined by four-score of local clergy, visited inmates in the city's
prisons. With former Philadelphia Mayor, now Reverend, W.
Wilson Goode, Mayor Street, joined by several national secular
nonprofit organizations and networks of community-serving ministries,
has encouraged the development of model public/private programs that
involve community-based organizations in meeting civic needs.

Two such Philly programs in which I have had a
hand are the Amachi mentoring program and the Youth Education for
Tomorrow, or YET, literacy program.

Amachi is a West African word that roughly
translates into English as "who knows what God has brought us through
this child." Working with Big Brothers Big Sisters of
America, and with core support from the Pew Charitable Trusts, during
just its first six weeks, the program mobilized nearly 500 volunteers
through local churches. Beginning this month, the
volunteers, some 40 percent of them males, will be matched as Bigs with
the children of incarcerated adults. Consider that,
pre-Amachi, the city had a total of about 500 Bigs for all
children. Consider also that, at 1,000 Bigs, half with
prisoners? children in the city's poorest neighborhoods, Philly will be
the country's biggest Big site. And consider that'the
program is just getting started. If the religious volunteers
continue to mobilize, and research on this Big program yields results
equal to or greater than the program evaluation results referenced
earlier, Reverend Goode will be ready. He and his
community-serving crew aim to get a loving, caring adult mentor into
the life of every prisoner's child whose parent or guardian requests
one.

YET centers are led by Dr. Marciene Mattelman,
a top literacy expert and pioneer in the field of community-based
reading programs who served on President Clinton's national literacy
commission. Working with public schools and through local
religious organizations, Dr. Mattelman has opened 21 YETs
citywide. YETs take only children who are at least two full
grades below reading level. On a shoestring budget, the
first YETs got rolling in the summer of 2000. The children
meet after school at least three days a week. Each YET
center meets two-dozen program standards. Each session lasts
for 90 minutes. Testing on the first 200 YET children found
that, after only a few months in the program, most had advanced by over
one full grade in reading level. That's highly promising,
but still preliminary. If the results stay strong, Dr. Mattelman
expects to expand YETs citywide so that every child or young person who
needs help reading can get it within walking distance of their schools
or homes.

I suspect that it was public/private programs
like Amachi and YET that the President had in the back of his mind when
he told Catholic leaders about his "office's commitment to faith-based
initiatives" and highlighted "mentoring initiatives and after-school
programs." Remarks at Meeting with Catholic Leaders, January 31, 2001.

But these are hardly the only such initiatives
that ought to excite hope and interest far and wide. For
example, America today faces a huge pending problem with delivering
quality services to infirm elderly persons. The Robert Wood Johnson
Foundation in New Jersey has led the way in fostering initiatives that
mobilize religious volunteers into "eldercare." A two-day conference
earlier this week at Duke University brought together key medical,
philanthropic, and religious leaders to explore ways of refining and
enlarging such community-serving partnerships.

The Compassion Capital Fund proposed by the
President would provide federal support on a public/private matching
basis to model initiatives that harness the strengths of
community-based organizations, religious and secular, and harbor a
promise of being able to address unmet civic needs at citywide or
national scale.

While we are still discussing the contours of
the Fund (there are several federal matching fund precedents worth
examining), my hope and expectation is that it will be structured and
administered so as to advance the President's idea of devolution:
"Resources are to be devolved, not just to the States, but to the
neighborhood healers who need them most." A Blueprint, op. cit., p.
56. Also see "The Duty of Hope," July 22, 1999. Ideally,
beyond any seeding phase, Fund support would never constitute more

than a quarter in any fully operational, at-scale program dollar, with
the rest coming from local government support and private, corporate,
or philanthropic support. Where possible and appropriate,
secular nonprofits could serve as lead agencies, much as in the
Philadelphia examples.

Vouchers,
Yes; Tax-Funded Sectarian Worship, No

In sum, when it comes to our three
interrelated goals--increasing charitable giving, human and financial;
leveling the playing field to meet civic needs and improve government
performance; and seeding or expanding model public/private,
religious/secular programs that promise measurable results at citywide
or national scale--we could not be more eager to get rolling.

Likewise, when it comes to the
anti-discrimination laws that accompany Charitable Choice, and to
church-state separation itself, we're simply saying what we believe the
Constitution requires, what's good for the country, and what's right,
period.

Some say that my office is being
cross-pressured or forced to choose between the left or secular
opinion, on the one side, and conservative evangelical opinion, on the
other side.

Truly, I feel no such pressure at
all. The President has been absolutely
steadfast. The Constitution's clear. Inter-faith,
ecumenical, public/private and religious/secular opportunities to serve
those in need are many and exciting. False controversies and
other inevitable distractions aside, our hearts are joyous and light.

We sincerely welcome the questions and
concerns about faith-based and community initiatives expressed by so
many journalists, by such friends as Howard Berkowitz of the
Anti-Defamation League, Melissa Rogers formerly of the Baptist Joint
Committee, John Carr of the U.S. Catholic Bishops Conference, Julie
Segal formerly of Americans United for the Separation of Church and
State, U.S. Senator Joseph Lieberman, and by so many other good people
of good will.

Pluralistic dialogues, not polarizing labels,
will unite us in promoting faith-based and community initiatives on
behalf of the least, the last, and the lost of our
society. A superb example is the document released last week
by the American Jewish Committee, and which I cited
earlier, In Good Faith: A Dialogue on Government Funding of
Faith-Based Social Services.

The
document grew out work by the noted historian and civil rights leader
Dr. Murray Friedman. It was the product of three years of
inter-faith, ecumenical, and religious/secular debate and joint
study. It found much precious common ground while leaving
plenty to argue over as well. It's available from the
Feinstein Center for American Jewish History at Temple University in
Philadelphia. I highly recommend it.

"Proselytizing" and "evangelizing" can take
many different forms. Dr. Friedman and the other
signatories of In Good Faith write:

In federal statutes, this proscription (i.e.,
organizations may not use government funds for
religious activities) is commonly expressed as
a requirement not to use government funds for worship, religious
instruction, or proselytizing...In most
situations, determining whether particular
activities fall into these categories will depend on the
facts and circumstances of each case. In Good
Faith: A Dialogue on Government Funding of
Faith-Based Social Services, Philadelphia, PA,
Temple University, Feinstein Center for American Jewish History,
February 2001, p. 8.

But some situations are simpler than others:

Teaching values or beliefs as religious tenets
constitutes religious instruction or
proselytizing. An example would be urging a
beneficiary to accept Jesus Christ or some
other religious faith as the only way to move
from welfare into employment. Ibid.

Religious organizations can include
specifically or strictly religious activities in their programs, but
they cannot use public funds to pay for such activities. It
helps to think in terms of a continuum of social services and civic
results.

At one end--the least problematic end from a
church-state perspective--you have, say, faith-based organizations that
do housing rehab work. They mobilize their volunteers from
the churches. They park their lumber in the church parking
lots. They may pray for good weather when working outdoors,
but it's all about faith-motivated good works in the form of hammering
and plumbing.

Down the continuum from the housing rehab
program is, say, a youth mentoring program in which a secular nonprofit
mobilizes religious volunteers directly through churches that receive
small stipends for their trouble.

Still farther down the continuum is a
part-religious/part-secular program where clients spend half their time
with psychiatric social workers.

And, at the other pole of the continuum, there
is, say, a faith-based drug treatment program that, as in the foregoing
example, is all about urging each beneficiary to accept Jesus Christ as
Lord and Savior. Its indivisibly conversion-centered
"treatment modality" takes the following form:

Your problem is X. To cure X, you
must believe Y. Y is a religious belief.
We help you come to believe Y. Our
mission, independent of X, is to profess Y,
and to bring more people to freely profess Y with us.

Recall once again that programs can receive
government support only if they follow all relevant anti-discrimination
laws that protect clients, duly segregate accounts, serve secular or
civic purposes, and prove results. The hybrid religious/secular program
can use any public pennies to fund the psychiatric social workers, but
not the specifically or strictly religious activities. The
indivisibly conversion-centered program that cannot separate out and
privately fund its inherently religious activities, can still receive
government support, but only via individual vouchers.

For instance, as a condition of parole, a
state requires an adult exiting prison to receive drug treatment,
secure in the knowledge that anything done to reduce substance abuse
will reduce the likelihood of recidivism and otherwise improve the
ex-prisoner's future life prospects as a family man, a worker, and a
law-abiding citizen. The authorities give the parolee a
state-approved list of two-dozen drug treatment programs within 25
minutes of his home. Most are secular and represent a range
of treatment modalities, from residential counseling to coerced
abstinence and beyond. Others, however, are faith-based,
ranging from hybrid programs to proselytizing programs.

If the adult freely chooses to use his or her
public voucher to receive services via a proselytizing program, then,
provided that ample and equivalent secular alternatives are available
to him or her, no constitutional or legal lines are crossed.

It is especially important for evangelical
leaders to remember that the "faith" in "faith-based" can take many
forms. Not all faith-based organizations and programs that
have the potential to serve their communities and achieve measurable
civic results are evangelizing organizations and
programs. Most, in fact, are not. Programs like
Amachi and YET rely on religious organizations and faith-motivated
volunteers without ever encouraging or requiring anyone to profess any
particular religious belief. Catholic schools perform minor
miracles in inner-city neighborhoods on behalf of poor children (mostly
non-Catholic) without requiring anyone to profess any particular
faith.

The largest single civic comparative advantage
of faith-based initiatives is their large, but largely under-mobilized,
volunteer bases, not their faith-specific conversion efforts or
proselytizing practices.

Some evangelical organizations perform great
civic good works, but their performance in reducing drug addiction
relapse rates and achieving other desirable civic goals awaits suitably
scientific documentation by qualified independent
researchers. I have faith in the "faith factor", but we need
unflinching, empirical data that conclusively verifies strong
outcomes.

Besides, as any self-respecting evangelical
Christian will gladly admit, the express goal of some evangelical
ministries is, indeed, conversion. The Bible gets read in
evangelical literacy programs not because it's graded reading material
(it's not), but because...it's the Bible! Prisoners and their
children hear the Word, and program workers preach it, not because it
achieves civic results, but because...it's the Word!

As I learned quite explicitly
during my time serving on the Board of Prison Fellowship Ministries,
evangelicals would still read the Bible, and still preach the Word,
whether or not studies showed that doing so demonstrably raised reading
scores, reduced recidivism, or kept prisoners' children from the cycle
of crime and violence.

Spiritual evangelization cannot and should not
be justified by cold empirical evaluation. Strictly
conversion-focused ministries cannot be tethered to rigid performance
protocols. Faith definitions of "transformation" ("he's
saved") are not the same as secular ones ("he's still doing crimes").

Speaking as a born-again Catholic, I would not
want genuinely evangelical ministries to be or behave
otherwise. And, speaking at the same time as a taxpayer and
secular official, I would never support tax-funded worship or
evangelizing. The President's ambitious agenda is rooted in pluralism
and voluntariness and measurable outcomes, and he welcomes good work
from people of faith -- whether Methodist, Muslim or Mormon -- or good
people of no faith at all.

Two Weeks and Counting

On Tuesday, my office had its two-week-old
birthday. We're eager to be known by our works, but we hope
that people will give us, well, at least a month or two to get
rolling. We're not in this to be 90-day wonders, and so we
wouldn't mind at least 90 days before reading stories about our rise or
demise.

Finally, I want to thank those of you here,
and the many hundreds of people all across the country, who have called
or sent notice of their support for what we're trying to accomplish
under the President's plan and in accordance with his "truth and
action" vision.

We all appreciate your support and your
prayers.

To me, the essential Christian social teaching
is that there are no "strangers," only brothers and sisters we have yet
to meet, greet, get to know, and come to love. I pray daily
that I may honor that teaching in word and deed. I hope I
have done so here today.

Here I am Lord. Is it I
Lord? I have heard You calling in the night.
I will go Lord, if you lead me. I
will hold your people in my heart.

Together, let's hold each other and all God's
children, especially our poor and needy, Christian and non-Christian
alike, in our hearts.

If we do, then yesterday's disagreements and
today's misunderstandings will be eclipsed tomorrow by faith-based and
community initiatives so self-emptying in their obedience and love that
they move the very heart of God.

If any evangelical organization can light the
way to "truth and action" it is, I believe, the National Association of
Evangelicals.